The intense passion for legislative term limits, a handy way to purge veteran politicos, has long since waned. But the bite of the term-limit wave that crested in the early '90s is sinking deep.

Take California, with the extraordinary lifetime limit it passed – two four-year terms in the state Senate, three two-year stints in the state Assembly. Close to 300 years of institutional memory goes out the window this autumn as the last legislators with pre-1990 experience are forcibly retired.

Among them are three prominent Senate veterans – Democrats John Vasconcellos of San Jose, John Burton of San Francisco and Byron Sher of San Jose – described by San Jose Mercury News reporter Dion Nissenbaum as "grizzled veterans, wrinkle-suited liberal lions."

Vasconcellos, the Legislature's dean with 38 years of service, has led on issues ranging from higher education to hospices and dying to the self-esteem movement he founded. Burton is a gruff, pugnacious point man in the struggle for social causes. Sher is widely hailed as the Legislature's most effective environmental advocate.

The departure of the three, California historian Kevin Starr suggests, marks an end to the 20th century "California dream" of a state able and truly destined to enhance the lives of ordinary people.

But the term-limits broom is thoroughly bipartisan. Many prominent Republicans are being swept out of the Legislature, too, among them some top Assembly leaders and Sen. Ross Johnson of Irvine, a staunch conservative first swept into office with the tax-cutting Proposition 13 in 1978. A big casualty, say all: the mentoring and the camaraderie, even of ideological opposites, that helped keep the legislative wheels grinding.

What's happening to California is hardly unique. Starting in 1996, term limits have ousted hundreds of legislators in states ranging from Colorado, Missouri and Oregon to Florida, Arizona and Ohio.

Advocates claim they're still a good idea, expelling career politicians, breaking up cozy power deals and bringing on fresh faces. The result, they claim, is increasing diversity in the legislatures and a counterbalance to incumbents' many advantages, such as easier access to the media and political money. Plus, it's claimed, rules have been cleaned up and legislators are getting more formal training.

The counter case is that term limits empty state capitols of experience. Greenhorn legislators struggle to cope with issues so complex that by the time they get a real grip on them, it's time to go. Alternatively, seeing they can't stay long, they arrive shouting, seeking headlines, rather than listening and learning. Lobbyists, career bureaucrats and fund-raisers are the only real winners.

With news of the downside, the oomph has drained from the term-limits movement. Twenty-one states adopted the limits, but four state supreme courts threw them out and two legislatures (Idaho and Utah) revoked them. While it may be tough to undo term limits in the 15 states that still have them, the fervor to add more seems dim.

California's Vasconcellos raises the larger issue: Are term limits an adequate "fix" at all? Of course they bring in "bright, more diverse" legislators. But noting such anomalies as 11 "exceedingly skilled" women being forced to relinquish their California Senate seats this year, he advocates expanding the limits to 12 years in each house of the Legislature.

Last year, Vasconcellos issued a "13 Strike" manifesto noting how California has "become dysfunctional, crippled to the point of paralysis" by such scourges as a bankrupt state government, constitutional gridlock imposed by the requirement that budgets and tax increases be approved by two-thirds of the Legislature, partisan reapportionment, and the corrupting influence of campaign dollars.

Underlying it all, said Vasconcellos: "Pervasive lack of trust in our political processes, and in our fellow Californians." He blamed compassionless Republicans, '"can't-say-'no'" Democrats and "systematic misinformation by a media that shows little signs of appreciating the difference between journalism, commerce, entertainment and titillation."

Rather than heading meekly into retirement, Vasconcellos has proclaimed a "12-Step Recovery Program" for California – "I've never had a more ambitious agenda," he acknowledges. Leading items: full public funding of statewide and legislative campaigns, mandatory public candidate debates, changing to simple legislative majorities to pass budgets and taxes, and an independent reapportionment body.

Vasconcellos also would add a "none of the above" line to ballots, to let voters vent their frustrations. Yet to gain majority consensus, he would add an "instant run-off" procedure in which voters rank their candidates in order of their preferences – a device designed to reach majority decisions even while fostering more moderate, less ideological politics.

Just to make sure the reform ideas get wide notice, not just in California but nationally, Vasconcellos has set up a nonprofit – "Politics of Trust," www.politicsoftrust.net.

So the old lion is not silenced. As a friend told Vasconcellos, term limits have done him a favor – "You're being made free, to take on the whole world, not just Sacramento."

Peirce is a nationally syndicated columnist focusing on regional affairs. He can be reached via e-mail at nrp@citistates.com.